How I Realized The Music Industry Isn't What I Thought - Niniola

Nigerian singer, songwriter, and performer Niniola is one of the most talented, energetic, and vibrant musicians today. Her unique brand of Afro House music has dominated the airwaves and carved out quite the path for her, but according to the singer, talent and the ability to sing was only but a sliver of what she needed to make it in this industry despite what she initially thought.

During an interview with The New Telegraph, Niniola opened up about the music industry, what it needs to do better, and the misconceptions she once had about it. Here's what Niniola said.

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" The Nigerian music has grown over time; what role do you think stakeholders, artistes, producers among others need to play to help the industry grow?"

First is the issue of piracy which has eaten deep into the system and hindering the growth and development we so desire; the government which is made up of individuals need to intervene. For instance if someone like you and me would not just pick up an artiste’s intellectual property (album) and put it up for free internet download, it will help the artiste and further encourage the artiste because the entertainment industry in general is capital intensive. If the government can join hands in fight against piracy, this will equally help artistes to work hard and put out good songs.

"Having been around in the industry, what is your impression about it generally? "

It’s just made me realise that there is a lot to the music industry than people see from the outside. Before I came in, I always thought that I can sing, I have talent, just enter and sing and everybody will look at you and dance, but when I came in I realised that wasn’t it and thank God that Project Fame gave me my prize money and in my mind I was like did they really give me this money? Because I had heard stories of what happens when people go for competitions. But they gave me and I invested that money in my career.

"Are you saying that without that money then, you would not have gone this far?"

You can’t do anything without money because I remember I dropped a song ‘ Ibadi’ which was my debut single and I did not have money to shoot the video until the end of the same year and that was not really good because people had already embraced the audio well. At the end of the day, money is key to any artiste to growing in an industry like ours.

"When you say you invested in your career, what aspect did you invest in? "

It was total package including my voice; I still enroll for song writing courses online because I make sure I keep improving on my art. If had been told I could grow and begin to write my songs all alone, I won’t believe until during the days in Project Fame Academy when you have to sing other artistes’ cover songs and then it got to a point when you had to perform your own personal composition; that was when I got to that crossroads and I was like ‘Nini, you have to do this.’ So I wrote a song titled’ Itura’ and on the show, producers were not comfortable as they insisted the song was too deep but I liked it and needed someone to speak for me and Cobhams Asuquo stood for me and said a writer has the liberty to tell a story the way he/she wants it, and deep inside me I applauded myself for job well done

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